{Drawing of Solomon Meyer.} SOLOMON MEYER, who collected the rents at Rickett's Court, was looked upon by the tenants as the landlord, though he distinctly disclaimed that honor, explaining that he was only the agent, empowered merely to receive money, never to disburse. According to Mr. Meyer the landlord was a heartless miser, whom he had entreated to make repairs and to lower rents, but who always turned a deaf ear to such appeals. If he, Solomon Meyer, only owned Rickett's Court, there would be no end to the reforms which his tender heart would cause him to institute; as it was, there was no hope for anything of the kind; his orders were explicit—if tenants could not pay, they must leave.

Many of the tenants believed that Mr. Meyer was really the owner of their building, and that the landlord whom he represented as responsible for all their discomfort was purely imaginary, but in this they wronged the agent. Solomon Meyer had no scruples against telling a lie whenever it would serve his purpose, but here the truth did very well. Rickett's Court had a landlord who, although he was not the inhuman wretch which Solomon represented him, still cared nothing for his tenants, and, while the agent had never suggested any reforms or repairs, might well have guessed that they were needed. Adelaide Armstrong would have been shocked beyond expression if she had known that the true landlord of Rickett's Court was no other than her own father. Mr. Armstrong would have been no less shocked if he had known of the abuses for which he was really responsible. He had never seen his own property. It had been represented to him as a profitable investment, and had proved so. He was only in New York for brief intervals each year, and he left the entire management of Rickett's Court to Solomon Meyer, well pleased with the returns which he rendered, and not suspecting that they were less than the sums wrung from the tenants.

He had mentally set aside Rickett's Court as Adelaide's property, and he used its proceeds to defray her expenses. There was a neat little surplus left over each quarter-day, which he placed in the savings bank to her credit, and with which he intended to endow her on her marriage. But of all this Adelaide of course knew nothing. Mr. Armstrong's more important business ventures were in western railroad speculations. These absorbed his attention, and needed the closest application of his faculties. He was glad of this. The East had grown distasteful to him since the loss of his wife and infant son. He felt that he might have been a different man if his wife, whom he tenderly loved, had lived; and Adelaide had never ceased to mourn her mother, whom she could not remember. "What shall I ever do," she frequently asked, "when I finish school? If I only had a mother to be my companion and counselor! but I shall be so lonely, and so unfit to take care of myself!"

The circumstances which I relate in this chapter because they belong here in sequence of time, did not come to my knowledge until long after their occurrence.

Mr. Armstrong came on from the West the evening of our fair. He was weary and much occupied by matters of business, and he did not attend it, much to our regret. He lent a kindly ear to Adelaide's description of it, for he was fond and proud of his beautiful daughter, and he liked to see her a leader in everything.

He manifested apparently little interest, however, in what she had to tell him of Rickett's Court. "There, there, Puss!" he said, lightly, "you must not get fanatical, and rant. I hardly think things are as bad down there as you make them out."

"But, papa," Adelaide interrupted, "I went there myself. I saw it with my own eyes. It is horrible to think that human beings should be obliged to live in such filth and misery. I think the landlord of Rickett's Court ought to be prosecuted. I wish I knew that old Rickett! I would give him a piece of my mind."

"I've no doubt of it; but spare me, Puss, since my name is not Rickett."

He must have felt a sharp twinge of conscience as he spoke, while his daughter's words could not have failed to make an impression on the false Rickett. He had read in the cars a little book entitled "Uncle Tom's Tenement," by Alice Wellington Rollins, and Helen Campbell's "Prisoners of Poverty." He wondered if their pictures of tenement life were indeed true. A few days later he listened to some remarks of Mr. Felix Adler's on tenement reform. He knew what Mr. Charles Pratt was doing in Brooklyn, and his better man told him that now was his opportunity. Why should he not put the plumbing in his tenement in decent repair; it might not cost much more, after all, than to bribe the inspector to report it as all right—a proceeding which Solomon Meyer advised. He could at least drain the sink in the court, and do away with the unchristian smells which now drove the chance visitor from the vicinity. And if he should have the rooms cleaned and whitewashed, he might even pose before the public as a humanitarian landlord, and so gain the cooperation of some of the philanthropists of the day for some other schemes which he had in mind.

He visited the court with a plumber, and found it in worse condition than he had imagined. There was a leak from the sewer in the back basement. All of the rooms were foul with vermin, and rats scuttled back into the walls through great holes. Many of the tenants had left, for various reasons. The opening of the Home of the Elder Brother was in great part responsible for the emptying of Rickett's Court, for the better class of its tenants had embraced this great opportunity to place their children in good surroundings. So many children had been transferred from Mrs. Grogan's care to the Home by their mothers that Mrs. Grogan, finding her occupation gone, betook herself to petty larceny and was arrested.

The Italian rag-pickers had taken to the road, with a monkey and an organ as tramps for the summer, leaving their filth behind them.

Mr. Armstrong looked into their vacated den, and found it impossible to imagine what it could have been when occupied.

The windows had been stoned by the street boys until hardly a pane remained, and the staircase had rotted so that he thrust his foot through it. The house would need plastering and glazing as well as replumbing. It began to look like a great undertaking. However, he bade the plumber make and send him his estimates, and hurried out of the court, not taking a full breath until he was fairly on Broadway. Then he sent a mason and a carpenter to look at the building. "I must make some repairs," he said to himself, "or I shall get no tenants whatever."

He had noticed another defect: there was but one staircase. He must add a fire-escape, for the place was a death-trap. He had a feeling of responsibility in regard to endangering the lives of human beings by fire, and he was trying to invent a scheme for heating and lighting railroad cars in such a manner as to do away with the danger of fire in case of accident. So far, the full completion of the invention escaped him, but he worked at it by night and day, not so much because it would be an immense boon to the age, but because he was sure that, if introduced only on his own railroad, it would boom the line above a rival route, and if patented, would make his fortune. Solomon Meyer, in enumerating the tenants of the court, had mentioned a Mr. Trimble, a poor inventor, who occupied the back attic, whom it would be well to turn out, as he had paid no rent for some time, though he had promised well, saying that he had just invented a scheme for the safe heating of cars, from which he hoped to realize a large sum. Mr. Armstrong thoughtlessly displayed before his agent the interest which he felt. "Bring the man to me," he exclaimed; "if he has really worked out the problem, it is just what I want."

The agent at once paid a visit to the poor inventor and possessed himself of his plans and model, promising to do his best for him.

Mr. Armstrong saw at a glance that the inventor had compassed just what had baffled him so long.

"What will he take for this invention?" he asked, eagerly.

"Not one cent less as five t'ousand dollar," replied Mr. Meyer.

"That is a good round sum," remarked Mr. Armstrong, "but the right to it is worth more than that to me. Arrange the papers for me, get the gentleman to sign them, give him this check for a thousand dollars, and I will send him another, soon, for four thousand."

Mr. Meyer saw his opportunity here. He returned to Mr. Trimble, assured him that his contrivance had been anticipated and already patented by another man: he was too late. The poor man's disappointment was intense; his head and hands trembled.

"I thank you for trying for me," he said; "there is nothing for me now but the river. I have occupied this room in the hope of paying my rent when I realized from that invention, but I have no longer any expectations, and I had better go and drown myself."

Then for the first time Mr. Meyer realized that there was another person in the room. Jim had come down to the court to see his old friends, and had dropped in to inquire after Mr. Trimble's son, a merry little fellow who had been a playmate of his in the old days. Jim had retreated into a corner when the agent called, but he now sprang forward and threw his arms around the poor inventor's neck.

"No, no!" he cried; "Mr. Meyer will beg Mr. Rickett to let you stay until the first of the month, and something may turn up by that time."

Some sense of shame prompted Solomon Meyer to yield to this request, though in his secret heart he knew that his own plans could be more safely carried out if his victim did drown himself; and the sooner the better. Then he hurried away to collect rents of the new tenants, with the money which Mr. Armstrong had sent Stephen Trimble burning like a coal in his pocket.

The contract for the new invention was returned to Mr. Armstrong at the same time with the estimates of the different mechanics for the improvements of Rickett's Court. It would cost three thousand dollars to put the tenement in decent repair, and this did not include the fire-escape. Mr. Armstrong whistled as he added up the items. It was really not convenient for him to place his hand on so much ready cash; certainly not without using the money which he had placed in the savings bank to Adelaide's credit. Mr. Meyer stood cringing before him, and Mr. Armstrong explained the situation.

The agent promptly disapproved of the improvements. They would be a great waste of money. No one would rent the tenements after they were repaired, for it would be necessary to charge a higher rent, and tenants able to pay it, or desiring bathrooms and sanitary plumbing, would not occupy such a quarter of the city.

"But suppose I do not charge any more rent, but simply try to educate my old tenants to better habits of life?"

Mr. Meyer explained that Mr. Armstrong could throw away his money in that way if he wished, but that the class of tenants who patronized Rickett's Court could not be educated. They preferred filth to cleanliness, and, however respectable their quarters were made, would soon convert them into sinks again.

Mr. Armstrong reminded his agent that his best tenants had left him, that the house was practically deserted, and that something must be done to attract new occupants.

Mr. Meyer assured him that applications had already been received for the rooms in their present state. A ship-load of emigrants had just arrived: Polish Jews and exiled Russians, who had been imprisoned as Nihilists, and who had suffered such barbarities that Rickett's Court, horrible as it was, seemed positively comfortable to them.

Mr. Armstrong hesitated. He did not like to give up his scheme of renovation; still, there were the papers waiting for his signature for the transfer of the invention, and this he had decided he must have; it was sure to bring in a great deal of money, and another year he could much better afford to make these improvements. He decided, reluctantly, that he would put them off for the present.

"I will have a fire-escape put up," he said to his agent, "and we will do the rest as soon as possible."

Solomon Meyer shrugged his shoulders. "There is no danger of fire," he said, "and I was about to propose that you take out a fire insurance policy on that building; that cost about the same, and much more sensible."

Mr. Armstrong thought a moment. "If the danger of fire is sufficient to warrant me in insuring, it is also great enough to make furnishing the fire-escape an imperative duty. I insist on your seeing that one is adjusted immediately. You may also take out an insurance policy for twenty thousand. See if Mr. Trimble can wait for the rest of his money until the first of the month. (The agent's face fell.) You have given him my check for one thousand; he ought to be willing to wait a few days for the rest. If he is not satisfied, tell him to come down and see me, and we'll come to some agreement."

This was exactly what Solomon Meyer did not wish. "I will try my best to make him sign the papers on those terms," he said, and carried them away to his own den, where he forged the name of Stephen Trimble to both contract and check. He found no difficulty in cashing the check, for Mr. Armstrong's name was well known, though Stephen Trimble's was not.

And in the mean time the poor inventor sat in his garret trying to think. His wife was in the hospital, and his little son busied himself with washing the supper dishes. It was not a heavy task, for their supper had consisted only of some cold griddle-cakes which, the flap-jack man had given them. When the boy had finished his work he crept close to his father and laid his head on his knee.

"Why don't you light the lamp?" Mr. Trimble asked, rousing himself.

"There isn't any oil, daddy."

"No matter. I can think better in the dark, and you had better go to bed."

"I am going out pretty soon to help the flap-jack man wheel his cart."

"Very well, Lovey, if he is a good man; I don't want you to do anything wrong."

"He's good to me, daddy."

"I'm glad of that; you need a friend, and you may need one more." He kissed his little boy as he went out—an unwonted action on the father's part—and waited until he was sure that the child had left the building, then rose, with a desperate look upon his face, and stepped out on the landing. The house was very full now; people had been coming for two days past with great bales of foul clothing, offensive with odors of the steerage, and had packed into the already dirty rooms. It was an unusually warm night for spring, and the house was unbearably close. The tenants had resorted to the roof, and were sitting under the stars, trying in vain to find fresh air, and screaming and scolding at one another in a strange, harsh language.

Stephen Trimble was about to descend the staircase, when two men of unpleasant aspect stopped him.

"You are the machinist who lives on the top floor?"

"Yes."

"Have you time for a little job?"

"Plenty of time. Thank God!" he added, mentally, "who has sent me help in time."

"Then come down-stairs with us: we are your neighbors, and are just under you.

"What do you want me to do?"

"We'll show you."

The men admitted him to their room, and carefully locked the door behind them. One of them struck a light, and in so doing dropped a match upon the floor. The other sprang upon it quickly, ground it out with his heel, and cursed him for his carelessness. Stephen Trimble looked about him, and saw that one end of the room was piled with boxes and tin cans, one of which was open, showing a compound slightly resembling maple sugar. A table stood before the low window, and on it was apparatus or machinery of some sort. The first man placed his candle on the table, and drew up a packing-box for Mr. Trimble to sit upon. There was no other furniture in the room.

"You do not live here?" said the inventor.

"No," replied the first man, who constituted himself the spokesman for both; "it isn't a sweet place to live in. We hire it as a workshop. You see, we are perfecting a sort of torpedo. You've heard of the submarine torpedoes that did such good service in blowing up the Turkish ships in the Russo-Turkish war?"

"Oh yes," replied Stephen Trimble, much interested. "I thought that stuff looked like dynamite! So you are inventing a new torpedo, which you mean to sell the Government? That's a good idea. They are thinking of increasing the navy, and it's always better to deal with the Government than with private individuals."

The silent man nudged his partner and remarked, "Yes, we're agoin' to deal with the Government. That's a good way to put it."

The other man made an impatient gesture, and proceeded to explain a small machine to Mr. Trimble. "You don't exactly understand my friend," he said, "but no matter. This kind of a torpedo isn't of the submarine kind; we pack the explosives here, matches here, friction paper just beside them; but just here we are stuck, and we need you or some other mechanic to show us how the thing can be set off by electricity, the operator to touch a button at a distance."

Mr. Trimble bent himself to an examination of the contrivance. He asked several questions, and as his scrutiny continued, his expression of satisfaction changed to one of mistrust and alarm. Suddenly he sprang from his seat and pushed the model from him. "That is an infernal-machine!" he exclaimed.

"That's about the long and the short of it," said the man, calmly.

"Then I will have nothing to do with it," and he turned toward the door.

"Hold on, my friend, ain't you a trifle in a hurry? All we want you to do is to fix that attachment for us, and if you won't do it some other man will, but we're willing to pay you a hundred dollars for the job. That's a goodish sum to pay, if the job is a little queer, but I take it you're used to doing queer things by the big checks that pass through your hands."

"What do you mean?" Stephen Trimble asked, with some indignation.

"Oh! you needn't pretend innocence and poverty. A man doesn't scatter round thousand-dollar checks who's as poor as you pretend to be, or as good, either."

"Tell me what you mean."

"Now don't tell us you know nothing of a check for a thousand dollars which we happened to see in the pocket-book of the agent of this building when he dropped in here to collect the rent."

"I never saw a check for a thousand dollars in my life."

"If you don't believe me, ask that sharp little boy of yours. It was he who first let me know there was a scientific man in the building. He saw me unpacking my machine. I happened to leave the door open just a minute. I never saw such a sharp little fellow. In he comes and says, 'My father makes machines too. He's going to make us awful rich some day.'

"After that he got in the way of knocking at the door and asking to see my machinery. I thought it would be a good idea to let him, for he is too little to suspect anything, and I could stuff him with the idea that I was making a new kind of telegraph, for I was pretty sure that he would tell it around, and that people would believe it and think there couldn't be anything shady in what I was doing if I let anybody and everybody have the freedom of the room.

"Well, the day I'm speaking of, your little chap was sitting there turning the crank of that machine just as cheerful as if it wouldn't have blown him to kingdom come if the attachment had only been on, when in come another little feller who had been looking for him. 'See here,' says my partner, 'there's getting to be too many children here; we don't keep a Sunday-school, we don't.' They were just going to leave, when the agent he come in with the rent contract for us to sign. Well, the boys lingered round, full of curiosity, as boys are, and we signed the paper and handed over the cash. Mr. Meyer in stuffing it away in his pocket-book brought to light that thousand-dollar check I was telling you about. He fumbled to hide it, but it dropped on the floor, and a little gust of wind carried it over to where the boys were. The oldest boy—Jim, I think your son called him—picked it up, and took a good look at it. 'Hullo!' says he, 'here's your father's name, Lovey. "Pay to the order of Stephen Trimble one thousand dollars"!' The agent he just made one dive for that check, with his fist lifted as though he were going to strike the boy, who dropped the check, and both the little shavers scooted, and none too soon either, for Meyer looked mad enough to kill the youngster, though he tried to laugh it off, and turned the check over and showed me that it was his fast enough, for it was endorsed on the back, 'Pay to the order of Solomon Meyer.'"

Stephen Trimble put his hand to his head in a dazed way. "You are fooling me," he said.

"Not we, but somebody is, if you don't know anything about it. Well, if you are not the bloated bondholder we took you for, perhaps you'll consider our little offer?"

"No, gentlemen, not to-night at least; give me time to think it over. One bad man may have wronged me, but I've no call to go against the law."

"Oh yes, take plenty of time"—and they opened the door. Some one was knocking at Stephen Trimble's own room. It was the flap-jack man, and he had a white, scared face.

"What is the matter?" asked the inventor.

"Lovey's been—"

"Run over?" gasped the poor father.

"No; arrested."

Stephen Trimble gave one exclamation of horror—then asked, "What's he done?"

"Nothing but wheeling my cart; they'd have caught me, too, but I cut and run. This is a pretty country where one is arrested for trying to earn an honest living!"

This was the last straw. Stephen Trimble had said that he had no reason to resist the law, but he could not hold to that now. He staggered feebly down-stairs, knocked at the door of the dynamiters, and said. "I've come back sooner than I thought I would. Give me five dollars in advance, and I'll undertake that business of yours to-morrow, and maybe I'll get up a little infernal-machine for my own use at the same time, but just now I must find my boy."

The man handed him some greasy bills. "You look sick," he said. "You had better go down to the free-lunch counter at the saloon, and have a good square meal."

Stephen Trimble went and ate and drank to excess. He did not look for his little son, and he did not return to the dynamiters' the next morning, for he was drunk—and drunk for three days thereafter. Then he sobered down and applied himself to the task which they had set him—a task intended to bring ruin to the class which had wronged him. He knew the aims, now, of the men for whom he was working, and he believed that he sympathized with them. They told him how they had borne imprisonment and torture for no wrong in Russia, and had come to this country expecting to find it the land of justice and kindness, but had met only the same tyranny of the rich over the poor—the rich, who cared for nothing but their own pleasures, and ground the poor under their chariot wheels.

As he worked he thought of his own private wrongs, and determined that as soon as his task was done he would seek out the man who had defrauded him. He was sure now that the check which the men had seen had something to do with his invention, but he believed that the true criminal was some one behind Solomon Meyer, the man to whom the agent said he had given his invention—the landlord of Rickett's Court. It was like a man who would compel human beings to live in such a state as this to commit such a fraud. He would hunt him down presently, and in the name of his tenants, as well as in his own cause, wreak such revenge that the ears of those who heard should tingle.

The landlord of Rickett's Court, all unconscious of the volcano upon which he was treading, attended the closing exercises of Madame's school, and listened with pride to his daughter's prize essay on "The Dangerous Classes."

There was a quotation from Ruskin at the close which pricked his heart a little, and made him regret that it was not convenient to carry out his good intentions just at present. How charming she looked in the white India silk, and how well she read that final quotation!

"If you can fix some conception of a true human state of life to be striven for—life for all men as for yourselves—if you can determine some honest and simple order of existence following those trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness, and seeking those quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace; then, and so sanctifying wealth into 'commonwealth,' all your art, your literature, your daily labors, your domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will join and increase into one magnificent harmony. You will know, then, how to build well enough; you will build with stone well, but with flesh better—temples not made with hands, but riveted of hearts, and that kind of marble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal."

Mr. Armstrong entirely ruined a new pair of kid gloves in applauding his daughter.

He consigned her to Mrs. Roseveldt for the summer, and in reply to that lady's urgent request that he would visit them, explained that Narragansett Pier was fraught with so many memories that he had never been able to revisit it. "I own a cottage a little distance from the town," he said. "It was there that both my children were born. We were in the habit of occupying it every summer, but since my wife's death I have neither been able to bring myself to go there, or to rent it, and it has remained closed."

"O papa, will you not let me have it for the summer?" Adelaide asked.

"Certainly, Puss, if you want to fit it up for a studio or that sort of thing; but it is in a lonely wood, and you must have suitable company with you if you think of staying there. If you manage to change the place and infuse new life in it, I may bring myself to look in upon you there. At all events, I will join you at the Roseveldts' as soon as I can; just now important business detains me."

The business, as we know, was the securing and putting in service of the new invention for heating and lighting cars. It was necessary for him to go to Washington to arrange for the patent, and it was on this trip that a clue most unexpectedly fell into his hands which seemed to lead to a startling discovery—a discovery which was more to him than any fortune which the invention could bring.

It all came about through a scrap of paper which fell in his way as he was looking about his hotel bedroom for a piece of wrapping-paper with which to cover the model of the machine which he was about to carry to the Patent Office. He could find nothing for this purpose but an old newspaper which lined a bureau drawer. In this he wrapped his machine, and took his seat in the street-car, the package resting on his knees. His fellow-passengers were uninteresting, and he fixed his gaze upon his package. A heading to one of the shorter articles in the old newspaper attracted his attention.

"Remarkable Case of Loss of Identity; the Doctors Puzzled."

He read on aimlessly.

"The physicians of —— Hospital have an interesting case. One of their patients, a lady, was injured at the burning of the Henrietta in the Sound in October last. This accident has resulted in a partial loss of memory, and total confusion as to her identity. The unfortunate lady is unable to give her own name or that of her friends. A remarkable circumstance in the case is the fact that, through all the horror and suffering of the accident, which has resulted in a partial loss of her reason, the poor lady kept her infant boy safely clasped in her arms, and the child, entirely uninjured, was rescued with her. Any person who believes that he recognizes a lost friend in this case is requested to communicate with Dr. H. C. Carver, of the —— Hospital."

Mr. Armstrong read this item over and over again. He had believed that his wife and child were lost in the burning of this steamer. Was it possible that they still lived? and what had ten years of separation done for them?

The horse-car passed the Patent Office, but he did not see it. He sat staring at the newspaper until the car brought him to the end of the route and the conductor touched him on the shoulder. "Pardon me, sir; I forgot you wished to stop at the Patent Office."

Mr. Armstrong woke from his reverie.

"No," he exclaimed, "at the railway station. I want to catch the next train for New York—none until 4 o'clock? Then I will go to the Patent Office; but, first, tell me where I can send a telegram."

CHAPTER XI.
THE GUESTS OF THE ELDER BROTHER.